A year of great progress

While 2024 will be remembered for the highly successful biennial World Lottery Summit in Paris, co-organized with host lottery Groupe FDJ, it was also a year in which the WLA realized several important initiatives, begun the previous year.  

We started the roll out phase of our new strategic plan. This entailed socializing the strategy with our members using our magazine and blog, and social media. We also developed a new WLA video, detailing our revised purpose, vision and mission, and a video in which WLA Executive Members highlighted some of the strategy’s benefits and goals.  

Work on one of the six areas of focus within the strategy was begun, to provide resources/tools of best practices, case studies, and other information supporting and promoting our members’ Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. The first deliverable is a Q & A module for members with Responsible Gaming questions – which can be submitted to our network of CSR experts for answering, at any time. 

The WLA head office assists the work of the Executive, and supporting Committees, in line with our new strategy, to create and promote useful materials and tools, to help our members realize their goals of raising funds to support good causes worldwide. To this end, we significantly increased coverage of WLA work and activities across our communication channels on the previous year.

"In January, we delivered a key project to digitalize our products and services, with the launch of the new WLA publications platform https://publications.world-lotteries.org/, together with new versions of the annual review, best practice guides, magazine, blog, security and risk management documents, and the Global Lottery Data Compendium."

The Corporate Social Responsibility Committee coordinates responsible gaming certification of WLA members. We published the WLA Responsible Gaming Framework Submission Guide 2024 (in English, French and Spanish), which was updated to reflect the certification process using the DigitalRG.com platform as of January 2024. Additionally, the Best Practice Guide for Corporate Social Responsibility for the Lotteries, was published.  

Our Security and Risk Management Committee developed the latest iteration of the WLA Security Control Standard (WLA SCS: 2024), which was published in the new format (in English, French, German and Spanish versions), in November. The accompanying Guide to Certification was also made available.

In order to help our global industry have a common understanding of what is considered to be a legal and an illegal betting operation, our Illegal Lotteries and Betting Committee (ILBC) elaborated the WLA Definitions publication that describes both types of operations for: Gambling Operators, Lottery Courier Services Operator, Betting on Lotteries Operator & Commercial Gaming Broker.  

Our Betting Integrity on Sports and Horse Racing Committee (BISHRC) developed the Horse Betting - Marketing Guidelines for Achieving Responsible and Competitive Offers, and the Anti-money laundering (AML) best practices for lottery and sports betting operators, which provides WLA lottery and sports betting operator members with useful measures to establish to better protect themselves from potential money launderers.  

Equally, a major milestone was achieved with the release in October, of the 11th Edition of the Global Lottery Data Compendium in its first-ever, fully online format. Covering reports for over 90% of the WLA membership, it is easier to access and use, has the potential for new features to be developed, allows content to be readily updated, is cost effective in terms of time and materials savings, and enables the reuse of content in other materials.

The new publications platform has greatly streamlined the publications process, enabling efficient time delivery, updating, and sharing of content, while facilitating new product development, for instance, special edition magazines and topic-specific compilations.

As already noted, it was a busy year for events, organized with our Regional Association partners around the world. These provided the opportunity to share knowledge and expertise with members on key industry topics including, marketing, responsible gaming, security, sports betting, as well as combatting illegal betting operators and match fixing. We also delivered our pinnacle, and unforgettable World Lottery Summit in Paris, together with host lottery Française des Jeux (groupe FDJ).  

Finally, I would like to conclude by thanking Loterie Romande, on behalf of the WLA and ULIS, for its unwavering support of both Associations, by kindly providing office space, and excellent assistance for human resources, IT, and accounting.